". . like fire, our sense of aliveness has an all-encompassing
warmth. connecting with this aliveness, in which lies our basic sanity
and well-being, is to discover our most intimate sensitivity from which
all our feelings and emotions arise." -- John Welwood (1983, p. 81)

The element in the third chakra is fire. This is symbolic of the emotions
as they have many of the same characteristics. They can flare up at the
slightest provocation and may do extensive damage if they are not controlled.
Both are difficult to control and have the properties of rajas, heat. Emotions
like fire are in constant motion, they flicker, roar, enflame the passions
and can escape their boundaries without notice. Their changes are rapid
and can be devastating. Both consume the material they depend upon for
their existence, whether it be wood or the body or the psyche. This suggests
that another similarity between fire and emotions is that both have transformative
power. Therefore, fire is symbolic for the potential in all of us for transformation.
We can "burn" up the dross in our lives and purify ourselves in preparation
for enlightenment.

Emotions in many people's lives are like a roller coaster casting them
continually from the heights of joy to the depths of despair. Women especially
are encouraged to use their emotions as a means of controlling others and
are excused for their unrestrained expression. We are all familiar with
cartoons and soap operas that show women crying to get their own way while
the men in their lives stand by in a blue funk. However, generally women
are supposed to express only tears and grief, but not anger. Men, on the
other hand, are not permitted to express grief but anger is allowed. This
unbalanced form of social control means that both genders must disallow
part of their emotional makeup. Such warping can lead to very unpleasant
consequences especially in relationships where people are bound together,
as in families or work situations, where they may feel safe enough to unload
their suppressed and often irrelevant emotions on unsuspecting others.
This is called "gunnysacking." We carry around suppressed emotions that
are disallowed by society until the load becomes too much to carry, then
it all spills out regardless of the consequences. Typical of this is a
person who is afraid to confront others at work and who then brings all
the suppressed rage home to dump on the family.

Emotions According to Psychology

Emotions are basically impulses to act. Our animal heritage provides
us with various drives that ensure we do what is necessary to survive.
Some of the most elemental are hunger and thirst, the need for shelter
and sex. The first three are committed to self-preservation and the last
to species preservation. We could call these motives "instincts" because
they operate without any conscious decision being necessary. Their activity
is mediated in the brain through the limbic system including the amygdala.
At this level, we can respond to an external threat before we recognize
and identify what the stimulus is. For example, if you are walking down
a path in the forest and suddenly come upon a snake, the chances are that
you will have jumped to safety before you even recognize what triggered
your action.

Human instincts can be put into three general catagories of movement:
1) the tendency to approach, 2) the tendency to destroy and 3) the tendency
to run away or escape. You will easily see in these the emotions of love,
hate and fear; or the Buddhist concepts of passion, aggression and ignorance.
Some people think that all of the so-called negative emotions come from
fear, and we can probably make a case for that. If we look deeply enough
for the trigger, we are likely to find a threat to either one's self-preservation,
physical or psychological as in the case of a threat to self-image, or
to species preservation. If a threatening situation presents itself, we
literally are programmed neurologically for fight of flight. Our adrenal
glands secrete adrenalin and the whole body gears up for a struggle.

Variations in how we respond to threat individually make up all the
forms of self- protective emotions. We are born with the basic instincts
and individual temperaments which shape the way we react to the world.
So some babies will fret gently when hungry, others will scream with rage
if they are not immediately satisfied. Frustration of basic needs usually
leads to anger or rage which leads to aggression if not checked either
by someone else or by oneself. We can see that a fear of self-destruction
does indeed underlie this aggression especially if it is humger or thirst
that is challenging. An attack or pain or punishment also activates the
aggressive responses unless the person has learned that retaliation leads
to even greater pain. In such a case, the response is most likely to be
withdrawal or flight. Severe child abuse has this quality even to the extent
of multiple personality disorders which involve dissociation of personality
aspects. If we cannot defend ourselves against pain or attack, we try to
escape. In that case, the fear drive comes into ascendency. Anxiety is
a form of fear that emerges when the source of attack is unknown or repressed.
We can also escape by going within, withdrawing from the world and other
people. Depression would be an example of this.

Because all human beings require others for survival, lack of love is
life-threatening and can lead to the usual forms of self-preservation or
to grief or depression. Most of us have no idea how widespread this deprivation
is in our materialistic society. Children who feel unloved may turn against
another sibling of whom they are jealous or may take out their anger on
animals or younger children. If they feel powerless, they may cry a lot
or withdraw. Some run away from home. Separation and/or rejection in childhood
are devastating because children are powerless to help themselves. There
is even a phenomenon called "separation anxiety" that is seen in young
preschool children before they acquire object permanency.

Even in infancy social conditioning is operating with selective rewards
and punishments for various kinds of responses, and the stage is set for
later emotional behaviors. When the ego appears, it takes on the job of
self-preservation, and later on conscience or superego accepts responsibility
for species preservation in the form of the social norms, rules and sanctions
that it enforces. Both ego and superego are learned patterns of behavior,
so we see that they must be conditioned by the people and circumstances
that surround us in infancy and childhood. The school-age period of development
is no exception.

Exercise: Emotions

1. Read chapters 1, 2, 12-14 and Appendices A-C in Emotional Intelligence.
Think about how your school life might have been different had this book
been widely circulated when you were young. Put what you have learned about
the training of children's emotional experiences together with what you
have learned about their intellectual and social development. It might
be interesting to make a chart similar to Table 1,
Book I. If you could step into your parents' shoes, how would you change
your early training?

2. Make a list of examples from your life of your movements toward,
against and away from other people and things in your environment. Just
jot them down without censorship as they come to you over a period of five
or ten minutes. If you cannot see yourself in this, ask a family member
or friend to do it for you. Then look at them and see what category predominates.
You might want to sort them into the categories you discover for ease in
processing. What in your childhood is associated with this pattern? If
you can dig out the roots of it, you may be able to understand it better
and/or to let go if that seems desirable.

Did you discover that some movements are combinations of the three mentioned
above? More often than not this is the case. What then are the components
of the mixed bags? How do you account for the particular combinations?
Is there any pattern in those? How much of your fight or flight emotions
are due to frustration? What are the major sources of frustration in your
life? What are you going to do about them? Think about each of them and
see if the true sources really exist outside of you or primarily in your
mind, i.e., how you interpret what the triggers mean? How many of your
emotional responses are automatic - that is, you make a response before
you take time to think about what the situation means? Are you capable
of a premeditated anger reaction? That means you think about the situation
and decide that anger is an appropriate response, so you confront the person
involved.

3. Read pages 159-169 in Planetary Brother. If you have been
working right along with these guidebooks, you should already have this
book. How does Bartholomew suggest you deal with your fears? What is the
role of awareness? Do you agree that fear can be transmuted into peace?

An excellent article on fear by Sam Keen appeared in the Yoga Journal,
May/June, 1999, p. 58.

The Yogic Attitude Toward Emotions

Yogis deal with emotions in terms of how they interfere with the journey
to enlightenment. So they are not as interested in how they are categorized
as they are in what triggers them and what we do about them.

Role of the Mind

In general the yogic position is that emotions are triggered by thoughts
in the mind. They are a response to the mind's interpretations of the meaning
of what is going on at the moment. For instance, mother comes into the
bedroom and finds her eight-year old daughter sitting in front of her dressing
table. She immediately assumes the child is into her makeup, gets angry
and begins to chastise her as she crosses the room. When she finds the
child sitting quietly looking over all the items she has displayed there,
she may feel a bit foolish about what her mind did with the "trigger."
However, the emotional arousal has already occurred and needs to be discharged,
so mother may find something else to fuss at the child about, like why
has she not yet done her homework? We do this all the time - make assumptions
about what is going on and react before checking it out to make sure the
response is appropriate. Probably this tendency is exaggerated to the extent
to which we are already stressed out.

In previous discussions, we have made a distinction between emotions
and feelings with feelings being a refined, higher level form of emotions.
This is not to denigrate emotions because they have their place in self-protection,
but to help sort out the various manifestations of our instincts. At lower
levels of expression and when ego gets into the act, emotions may become
a reaction to the frustration of self-gratification.

Self-will

The ego is invested in getting its own way. This manifests as self-will
which may enable us to gain the objects of our desires if we persist doggedly
enough. However, dedication to self-gratification gets in the way of our
progress toward unity consciousness because it wastes energy, strengthens
ego in its enforcement of duality and its sense of being in the driver's
seat, and it creates detours that are unnecessary. Desires are created
by fantasies of the mind, as opposed to needs which are the body's messages
about what it needs for survival. We have seen how the imagination gets
carried away with fantasizing and elaborating desires. So this is another
role of the mind in generating emotions, one we can easily do without.

Self-gratification takes up most of our waking time. I want... How many
times a day do you think "I want..." or "I don't want...?" Or "I wish..."
We have been brainwashed by all the advertising in our culture to think
constantly about our wants and likes and dislikes and to connect their
potential satisfaction with our sense of well-being. Look at the malls
that are dedicated to self-gratification, the big, shiny cars, the built-in
obsolescence of all our electronic equipment especially computers. Try
to go through a day without thinking "I want."

Sex is part of this, and it is also inflated by advertising, so much
so that many of us cannot perform adequately because we hold ourselves
to an externally generated standard of what intercourse should be like.
Soap operas, romance novels and locker room braggadocio spread the word
and feed the fantasies. Men are encouraged to identify with sexual prowess
and conquest of women to sustain their masculine self-images. Women must
wear makeup, girdles, panty hose and brassieres, all of which must be purchased,
in order to attract men. What for? Gratification of ego needs. Anyone can
see that the sexual drive does not need any such help to gain its ends.
Besides, what really attracts the opposite sex is pheromones.

The way out of this dilemma is to work systematically on becoming aware
of our emotional reactions and then to connect them with the mental activity
that sets them off, so we can intercept the energy before it is invested
and divert it to more useful purposes. The process might look like this:

1. Learn to stop before expressing an emotion to identify it.

2. Try to find the true source of the emotion either in the past (is it
a habit that runs itself off whenever a certain something occurs) or in
an objective trigger.

3. Take a moment to decide whether the emotion is appropriate to express.

4. If so, figure out a way to do so without harming anyone.

5. If not, let it go or transmute it into another form of energy.

How do we do this? Practice.

The Witness Self

One of the first steps is to become aware of the Higher Self that is
sometimes called the Witness Self. This is that part of ourselves that
does not get emotionally involved with the dramas of life but maintains
a certain amount of detachment. Thus it can oversee our lives from a neutral
position. It is related to the still,small voice we hear commenting on
events from time to time. It can be accessed in meditation, in guided imagery,
in deep relaxation and on other occasions when we are relaxed, mentally
quiet, alert and open to guidance from within. The Witness Self is a valuable
ally in the effort to tame emotions just because it is detached.

Exercise: Higher Self

Read chapers 3 and 4 in Emotional Intelligence. Then begin to
watch yourself for several days to try to catch glimpses of the Witness
Self. What part of your body is it in? What, if anything, does it tell
you? As you become more familiar with the Self, you can set it to watch
your emotions as they come up. When that process is established, stop the
emotion at its beginning long enough to figure out what the real trigger
is. Then make a rational decision about whether to express the emotion
- if it is still pending after the source is identified. Often the source
will turn out to be some expectation you have that you could do without.
Or perhaps there is something in the situation you just have to accept
because you cannot change it. You can always change your mind though you
cannot always change the external environment.

You may object to making a rational decision on the grounds that emotions
are not meant to be rational. Only part of that is true. Emotions do not
obey rational laws, but you can deal with them rationally. In fact, you
must, if you wish to make progress on the spiritual path. The most effective
way to deal with them is to change the way you think about the things that
trigger them.

This process is not easy. Sometimes, you may have to go through weeks
or months of time struggling to identify the missing piece. But, once you
do, everything will fall into place and you will know what to do, or the
emotion will be defused.

Renunciation

We can also work with desire and the emotions that result from its frustration
through renunciation of both desires and outcomes. Or we can refine problematic
emotions into feelings by moving them from the third chakra to the fourth
chakra. Let us take lust as an example.

Exercise: Lust

1. Pick a time when you are suffering from unrequited lust. This might
be a time when you are experiencing sexual desire for someone who is an
inappropriate lover or you do not have a partner or you are celibate. Go
to your prayer room or altar and sit for meditation. You might want to
prepare the altar for this specific purpose by putting relevant articles
on it, whatever speaks to your condition. Keep in mind that you are about
to raise the level of vibration of this desire and purify it, so you might
decide to use an image of a deity who would help you transcend your dilemma.
You may also want some form of Light, an offering and other symbols to
support you.

When you sit, allow time for your spirit to settle and get into the
solitude of mindlessness. Practice deep breathing until the rhythm of your
breath settles down and becomes even. When you are quiet, begin to get
in touch with the desire. Locate where it is in your body, and in which
chakra. Allow yourself to feel it in its fullest intensity. Look within
and allow yourself to see it. What color is it and how big is it? Does
it have strong boundaries or is it fuzzy edged? What is its texture?

When you have a clear feel for the desire, then visualize rolling it
up into a tight little ball. See what color the ball is now and what size
it is. When you have it firmly in your control, begin to raise it to the
fourth chakra. You do this by breathing into the ball and on the outbreath
visualize it moving upward. It may help to imagine you are placing the
ball in the heart center. Continue with this breathing and movement until
the ball is solidly located in the heart center. Then release it and allow
it to open up - very gently and sensitively as if it were something precious.

You may want to conclude by offering the energy you have released to
the Divine One.

Make notes in your journal about what happened.

2. Read verse 19 in the Tao Te Ching.

Toxic Emotions

"Anger, driven underground, poisons my life."
- Adrian
van Kaam

Emotions are like the multiheaded hydra. Whenever one is cut off several
more seem to grow into place. It is as if the body contracts with fear
cutting off the normal channels for energy flow, and, when they are blocked,
the energy runs off in all directions overloading and messing up other
parts of the body that were not originally affected. So we create a monster
by not keeping the system in pristine condition. We suffer from pain of
all kinds, stress, chronic fatigue, illnesses of body and mind, depression,
addictions, etc. most of which have emotional disturbance at their roots.
Our repressions, suppressions and frustrations pile up unexpressed emotions
like a nuclear waste pile ready to blow at any moment and giving off noxious
fumes in the interim. The system of social conditioning to which we are
subjected creates some degree of emotional disability in all of us except
perhaps a lucky few who had exceptional parents or those who have worked
extensively to transmute these energies.

Illness

It should be fairly clear to us by now that most, if not all illness
is psychosomatic. There is ample documentation that most dis-eases can
be cured by spiritual healers using a diverse assortment of methods. You
may not want to buy this observation because we are so deeply committed
to the medical model. However, more and more people are straying from the
medical establishment in search of more humane, less invasive ways of curing
their ailments. And they are finding alternative forms of healing that
meet their needs often in the face of medical failures.

Emotions like anger, hatred, rage, fear, distrust, suspicion, and others
undermine our health because we allow them to give messages to the body
that things are out of balance. However the body does not selectively observe
valences. Whatever strong emotions are in the body are manifested in tissue
changes regardless of whether they are positive or negative. Hence, we
say a person's life is reflected in his/her face and body. If someone withdraws
chronically and allows their chest to cave in to protect the heart, a curvature
of the spine can result. Compression of the lungs, heart, liver, stomach
and pancreas may also result conveying a message of depression that can
spread to every cell of the body. We have seen how the cells communicate
with each other and with the neurohormones of the brain. So we know what
mechanisms are used to spread the word throughout the body.

Exercise: Illness

Read chapter 11 in Emotional Intelligence. How do you think we
might help our medical establishment come to validate emotional illnesses?
How would you treat one in yourself?

Stress

Stress has the same effect as emotions except that it operates via the
autonomic nervous system that is the defense arsenal of the body. The result
of chronic stress is a long standing siege that will if unrelieved eventually
result in complete breakdown and exhaustion. The weakest systems in the
body will go first. And there is usually a psychosomatic message in which
system is most vulnerable (it will manifest first). Consider, for instance,
the relationship between Type A personalities and the tendency for them
to have heart attacks. A Type A personality is driven to achieve. Such
a person cannot relax and allow the body to recuperate. Nor does s/he have
the time or inclination to engage in deeply satisfying and relaxing intimacy.
One imagines a business tycoon, whose family is essentially fatherless
and husbandless, who eventually dies in his office or a mistress' bed from
heart failure. Is the connection so difficult to make? Such an individual
lives in his head, his heart is closed because it is too vulnerable to
have a place in his business dealings. So it implodes and dies. You might
want to look at an interesting article on reducing stress by Mark Matousek.
It was published in Common Boundary, March/April, 1999, 30-35.

Lung cancer is another case in point. Research tells us that smoking
causes cancer. But the studies are all correlational, and correlation does
not establish cause and effect. It only says the two things occur simultaneously.
What if the people who smoke do so because they do not feel loved and what
if cancer also occurs in those who do not feel loved? Does smoking then
cause cancer or does the not being loved cause both the cancer and the
smoking? To my knowledge, the condition of lovelessness has not been examined
as a potential cancer-producing agent. It has, however, been suspect in
heart conditions. Dean Ornish's work speaks to that association. Another
suspect as a cancer provocateur is lack of the opportunity to grow. A person
cannot grow because of life circumstances, so the cells in the body grow
instead in a flagrant and wasted outpouring of life energy.

Pain

Pain can be physical, mental, social, psychological or spiritual. It
occurs anytime there is an injury or imbalance in a system. Generally there
is a boundary to the pain that gives it definition and accounts for a contraction
somewhere in the bodymindspirit. It serves a warning purpose and forces
us to seek healing when we might not otherwise do so. We are fairly familiar
with the parameters of physical pain, somewhat less so with psychological
and mental pain and virtually not at all with spiritual pain.

There is good reason to suspect that disruptions in the spiritual domain,
if not corrected or balanced, may manifest on the mental and psychological
planes where, if not detected, they may emerge on the physical level. This
idea is based on the model of the person as a series of concentric, interpenetrating
circles or domains (see Figure 2-1 and Govinda,
1982, pp. 148-9). If this is true, healing should begin at the spiritual
level and could be expected to work its way downward finally into the body.
Those who have tried this method will be able to give testimony to its
effectiveness. Saints, with a few notable exceptions, have been examples
of positive wellness all down through the ages. These are people who have
worked extensively on their spiritual health, and we see it reflected in
their lucid minds and healthy bodies.

Depression

Depression can have many causes. But, if we look at the symptom itself,
what we see is dispiritedness, lifelessness, hopelessness, lack of vitality.
One of the main causes of depression is the turning of anger inward upon
oneself. This may be coupled with feelings of loss of control over one's
life and the inability to change things which leads directly to fear and
anxiety. Clinical depression is now called an affective disorder giving
credit to its emotional etiology. If we cannot manage our emotions, we
may become depressed.

Exercise: Depression

1. Read chapter 15 in Emotional Intelligence. How does Goldman
see emotional literacy preventing depression? As you read this chapter,
make a list of all the skills he mentions in connection with emotional
literacy. Then rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 on each skill. When
you are finished strike an average to see how you fare in your own judgment.

2. Scout around and see if there is a teacher of Qigong or (Chi Kung)
available near you. If so, take a series of lessons. As you do so, keep
in mind the possibility of using what you are learning to deal with troublesome
emotions especially depression. Ken Cohen (1999) has put together a set
of audio tapes called "The Practice of Qigong"if you want instruction.
They are available at www.soundstrue.com.

Emotional Disability

This is a term coined by Daniel Goldman (1995). It is the inability
to function normally because of emotional problems. In this category, we
find such disorders as delinquency, bullying, dropouts, depression, eating
disorders, addictions, sexual abuse and fascism. What is most disturbing
is that all of these disabilities are increasing at an alarming rate in
our society. It is very tempting to see inadequate loving as one of the
causal factors because these manifestations of social disability are all
tied to personality problems that begin in the early years of life either
because of neglect or of outright abuse usually by parents. That many of
these parents are not home enough due to the need to work long hours to
provide for the family does not mitigate the problem though it goes a way
toward explaining it.

It is apparent that, as a society in general, we do not care very much
about our children, all of our children, that is, since we refuse
to take responsibility for the children of others less fortunate than we
are. And since we are all One, that neglect causes pain and a disordered
spirit and soul in all of us whether it is experienced consciously or not.

How to Work with Negative Emotions

Although emotions can be seen as either positive or negative, I am going
to focus attention on those generally felt to be negative because they
cause us the most trouble. It is probably fair to say that all of us have
emotional problems. Our social system does not provide adequate means for
the safe expression of negative emotions. We want people to stuff their
anger and fears and not "rock the boat" because it makes us uncomfortable
to witness their problems or to feel obliged to deal with them. It is probably
also true that others' negativity stimulates our own to come into consciousness,
and since we do not know how to deal with it ourselves we would just rather
not know about it.

This being true, the first method of dealing with negative emotions
is to throw light on them. We need to find the initial causes, one by tedious
one, which will lead to insights and understanding which will lead, in
turn, to the ability to let go of them. It is the hiding of them in closets
of the mind that causes the explosiveness. As well, they suffer distortions
when not brought to light, so they become hideous to confront. Hitler's
rage is a good example of this.

Another thing we can do is to reprogram the mind to change the way we
think about issues of importance to us. This may mean unseating the critic
which we will deal with in unit 9. It also means reexamination of all our
cherished opinions, preconceptions, concepts, ideals, prejudices, attitudes,
assumptions and expectations. As part of this, it helps to try to become
more open-minded about the positions of others and to become more open
to new ideas about how to be in the world. If we can gain a new and different
perspective on how things really are, it can change our whole lives rather
drastically.

Jamie's mother constantly whines about her loneliness and the fact that
her children do not seem to care for her any more. In fact, she complains
so much that her children simply do not like to be around her. "I'm so
tired of being by myself," she says. "I can't get any help in the yard
anymore." "No one calls me anymore." "I just can't do what I used to do,
and it makes me so mad." "The doctor doesn't take me seriously." Finally,
Ned, Jamie's brother, asked his mother, "What do you get out of being a
victim? Their mother broke into tears protesting that they were picking
on her and adding insult to injury. Later, however, in the privacy of her
own room, she had to look at her habit of blaming others for things in
her life that were going wrong.

We all have to take responsibility for our own life's scenario. Other
people do not "do it to us" unless we allow it. And the chances are that
the whole thing is a projection of our own repressed negativity that we
are unwilling to face. As long as we are making these interpretations with
our thoughts, we are getting in our own way. One thing that helped me deal
with some of these issues was to consider that maybe I, as an unborn soul,
chose my parents and all the major events in my life before I was born
in order to learn certain lessons from them. This enabled me to take responsibility
for things I did not directly choose in this life. Once you do this, you
can reframe your interpretations of past events that have driven your life.

When we can take such responsibility, then we need to learn new ways
to respond. This can be very difficult especially if our habits of responding
to life have persisted for a long time. Ingrained habits are notoriously
difficult to change, but not impossible given adequate motivation. We change
our style through practice. It helps to have a group of like-minded supporters
to keep us on the path during this phase. Since this is a form of ego education,
it is perhaps impossible to do alone. Families can help since they tend
to be unblanchingly honest. So can spiritual communities such as ashrams,
monasteries and convents. Any group of committed people can do this job
if they are not afraid of you. However, you have to be open to corrective
feedback.

Another practice is to make yourself stop and think before expressing
your emotions. If you ask where the energy is coming from and what triggered
it, that may give you time to sidetrack the train. An analogous practice
is to do the opposite of what you are inclined to do. If you want to express
your rage, do something kind for the person. This acts as a kind of antidote.

But, you may say, I thought it was unhealthy to keep my rage suppressed.
That is true. It is. However, what you are aiming for is to undercut the
emotion at its roots before it becomes full blown rage, or fear or whatever
it is, by rooting out the causes which are most likely to be found in your
thinking process and memory. If you can transpose it before it blossoms,
there will be no negative energy to mess up your system. On the other hand,
anger freely expressed can wreak havoc with your relationships. The energy
stays around for a long time and the pain it causes in the other person
is not easily forgotten. Usually, they will try to avoid future encounters
with you for that reason. You can assure yourself of this if you look back
into your family history at some instance of a parent's anger. You may
not be able to remember the cause of their anger, but you can certainly
remember its impact on you and the fear it engendered. Aggression evokes
fear which leads to defenses.

Any form of resistance to training the ego and mind falls into the category
of negativity because the ego does not want to change. So how do we deal
with this unpleasant situation? Gently. There is a tendency to respond
aggressively as soon as the emotion is identified. So, when we are feeling
a strong negative emotion, for instance, instead of pushing it away or
trying to ignore it, go into it. Allow it to be what it is and watch it.
Experience it fully. You do not need to take action on it, but allow yourself
to feel it. When you own it, you create space to be skillful in dealing
with it.

Negative energy can be transmuted into wisdom. You identify with it
and become it by not pushing it away. When you identify with it, there
is no longer an object of it, you are just anger or whatever it is. Then
it turns into just energy. However, to achieve this, you must avoid thinking
about it. Just feel it. Thinking or labeling puts edges around it and makes
it solid. The point is not to try to get rid of pain or negativity, but
to gently lean into it and own it as yours. Watch it move and change with
a kind of detached curiosity. The emotion is not really bad. And, when
it is transmuted into compassionate wisdom, it can then be expressed.

A final suggestion is that we do something constructive about educating
our children and each other in emotional control, disarmament and social
negotiation. If we discover ways of settling disputes and protecting ourselves
with sensitivity and grace, we can begin to mend the socially-triggered
diseases we have created.

Exercise: Toxic Emotions

1. Read chapters 5, 6, 15 and 16 in Emotional Intelligence. Then
see if you can get an appointment with the counselor in your local middle
or high school to discuss the topic of emotional literacy. If you can afford
it, give him/her a copy of this book.

2. Select one of the types of emotional disability such as depression,
delinquency, bullying, dropouts, withdrawal, eating disorders, addiction,
sexual abuse or any other that is relevant to you and make a collage of
it. Then make notes in your journal about how this creative work changed
your attitude toward it.

Transmutation of Emotions

"Emotions . . are the blood shed by ego. ." - John Welwood

Transmute means to change from one form to another. So if we apply this
idea to emotions, we might be able to change the way the energy behind
emotions is manifested, thus keeping ourselves out of trouble and making
the energy available for the spiritual journey. Or perhaps we would be
able to change the valence of the emotions to more positive ones such as
compassion, joy, harmony, peace, love, etc. that are some of the feelings
we discover in the heart chakra

Exercise: Transmutation of Emotions

1. Read chapters 8 and 9 in Awakening the Heart. How does Welwood's
attitude toward emotion differ from the Yogic and the usual religious approaches.
John is a Buddhist practitioner. Can you see how his recommendations fit
with the Buddhist tradition? How does van Kaam suggest we deal with anger?
Do you think it would work? Would it work for you? Will you try it for
a month to see?

Now, let us look at some of the tools traditionally used to achieve
emotional transmutation.

Chanting

Whether it is mantra or Gregorian chant, sustained, chanted repetition
of words, phrases or sounds that have been invested with spiritual energy
over centuries of practice leads to harmonization of the whole human system.
Chant works to align and raise the frequency of vibrations in the body
as you can ascertain for yourself by engaging in the practice. However,
it takes time to achieve a lasting change in your bodymindspirit. I have
often wondered if that has anything to do with the notion that all the
cells in the body are renewed every seven years.

To work with emotions using chanting, you can vary the rate, volume
and inflection of a mantra while you are chanting it and, at the same time,
visualize the emotion dissolving or changing into something more acceptable.
However, you should not change the pitch as that is directly related to
the frequency of vibration of the chant which is what is effective and
lasting. You may practice with any mantra including OM which is intoned
A-U-M repeatedly. The pitch of OM may be varied.

A variation on chanting which does not necessarily have spiritual overtones
in quite the same way is a practice called toning. To tone, you lie down
on the floor and relax. Then begin to make random sounds drawing them out
slightly to get the full effect. Let the sounds come from your deepest
body sources trying not to censor them and watch what happens to them over
time. Do this practice until you feel finished.

Exercise: Mantra

Since we will be meeting the warrior Rama in the unit on empowerment
which follows, why not practice his mantra? All of the notes are in the
octave just above middle C. All of the Ram notes except the last one in
each line and the OM notes are held twice as long as the others. The A
notes are half as long as the others. This is not exactly correct but is
as close as I can get in words. It is 3/4 time.

F# G# F#
G# F# G# F# ^ E
F#

Sri Ram Jay Ram Jay
Jay A Ram Om

D# E F#
D# E F#
E ^ E E

Sri Ram Jay Ram Jay
Jay A Ram Om

The exact music can be found in Mantras, Bhajans, Songs at Yasodhara
Ashram (1979). This little book can be ordered from Timeless Books,
Box 3543, Spokane, WA 99220-3543. There are other mantras in this book
that we will be using.

Breathwork

Some forms of pranayama and breathwork can be helpful in dealing
with emotions. For one thing, deliberately taking deep breaths and focussing
attention on the inbreath and outbreath can calm the mind and the emotions.
We would expect to find emotional energy in the etheric body (pranamayakosa
sheath),
and this is the realm of pranayama. So working consciously with
the breath should have a beneficial effect on emotions to balance and harmonize
them.

There are a great many different forms of breathwork you might sample
if you have a chance. One is Holotropic Breathwork designed by the Grofs.
You can read about this process in "The Thirst for Wholeness: Addiction
and the Spiritual Path" by Christina Grof in ReVision magazine,
Vol. 15, No. 4, Spring 1993, pp. 162-168 or "Holotropic Therapy" by Stanislav
and Christina Grof in New Realities magazine, March/April, 1987,
pp 7-9, 54-58. If you look through some of the New Age type or Yoga magazines,
you will probably come across announcements of workshops in Holotropic
Breathwork given by the Grofs should you want to experience it for yourself.
Or you can contact them directly through the magazines above. If you cannot
find these magazines in your local library, you can order copies of the
articles from Interlibrary loan. Ask your local librarian.

TransformBreathing is a process developed by Caron and Tom Goode and
is offered in Boulder, CO. Their organization is called Goode Works. You
can reach Caron at: caron@transformbreathing.com

Bioenergetics is a type of psychotherapy that works directly with the
breath and emotions to help clients gain release from the negative energies
and access the unconscious.

Various types of bodywork and massage can also help release old holding
patterns in the body due to emotions that were not allowed expression in
the past. Hakomi therapy combines psychotherapy with massage. However,
most massage therapists are familiar with the body's holding patterns and,
if you allow it, work on the tense muscles and fascia may help you access
old traumas and release the associated emotions. Massage is especially
good for this because of its nurturing qualities and because touch is such
an elementary need. This type of massage also uses breathwork.

Exercise: Breathwork

Pranayama. You will need two or three blankets and a bath towel
for this exercise. Fold one blanket until you have a square about 2' X
2'. Open the other blanket on the floor and place the folded one where
your upper body will be when you lie down. Fold the towel so it will comfortably
elevate your head and place it on the folded blanket. Lie down with the
folded blanket edge at your waist and your head on the towel. This will
elevate your torso and your head above the torso thus supporting your chest
and back. If your legs are uncomfortable, you may put a bolster or a pillow
underneath the knees. If you wish you may cover yourself as well so you
do not become chilled. If you have an eyerest, you may place it over your
eyes.

Begin to breath naturally. When your breath settles see if the inhalations
and exhalations are even and balanced. Make an "ssss"-like sound on the
inhalation and an "hhhh" sound on the exhalation. When that is well established,
you may modify the sounds to "So-ham" which is a mantra. See which works
best for you and continue with that. Do this for ten minutes. Set a timer
if you need to.

Second step. Exhale through your mouth until the lungs are empty but
do not strain. Then inhale normally through the nose. Then exhale slowly
and deeply until the lungs are empty again. And repeat the cycle for ten
minutes.

Notice what this does for your emotional condition.

Worship

We need to rethink our jaded concept of worship. It is not just attending
church, singing a few hymns and saying a few prayers. Unless our hearts
and souls are engaged, those are just fruitless substitutes for the real
thing. We have to bring to the service or ritual ourselves, our deepest
spiritual intentions and unconditional love. Worship in not meant to be
an opportunity to ask for what we need nor to appease a judicious god.
It is intended to be an opportunity to merge with the Divine One. So we
bring to it our loving devotion, an humble heart and a willingness to put
ego aside for the interim. We come in a state of grace, or, if we are not
in a state of grace, we do the necessary spiritual practices to achieve
that state. This may include some form of confession if we feel our separation
deeply. Confession addresses all those things which separate us from the
One. Then we approach the godhead.

First we invite the Divine One to be present. This can take the form
of some sort of invocation. We may do a ritualistic feeding of the Divine
One. This might include offering ourselves in surrender to Divine will.
We may then sing or chant our praises and express our joy in the Divine
Presence. We may express our gratitude for the Universal Love within which
we are encompassed. If desired, we can observe some form of communion using
food and/or water to symbolize our connectedness. All of these parts of
ritual serve to bring us closer to Divine Love and overcome feelings of
separation and grief. Worship nurtures us in its process. The ritual serves
to keep our minds focused on our intention.

Exercise: Worship

1. Read Return to Shiva, chapter 15. Think about the symbolism
expressed in this reading.

2. Create a worship service for yourself that uses symbols that are
meaningful to you and that addresses either a deity that attracts you or
a symbol for the Universal Reality. It is not the form that is important
but the Presence or Essence of the Whole, of the One that contains us all.
Use rituals that speak to your heart and soul and that express your devotion
in this moment in time. If you have been worshipping right along, use this
as an opportunity to review what you are doing to see if it is still current
and meaningful. If you go out to a church or other religious center for
services or meditation, use this as an opportunity to create a service
you can use at home, perhaps daily. Engage in this service regularly for
a month keeping notes in your journal about what you experience. At the
end of the month, write a short paper for yourself summarizing what you
learned from the experience.

It will be a good idea to continue your worship and also to periodically
review what you are doing in order to keep it up to date. This is especially
important for you if you are an intellectual or a person who tends to live
in your head. Devotion is a heart activity and, if practiced faithfully,
will assist in your heart-opening.

Gratitude

"Gratitude is heaven itself." - William Blake

Gratitude means more than just saying "thank you." Someone gives us
a gift and we say, "thank you" then go on to our other affairs without,
perhaps, sparing any thought for the motivation of the giver or any obligation
on our parts to return the favor. However, there is a balance involved
in doing things for others, one that is usually subconsciously registered.
We have an intuitive sense of whether we owe our neighbor a favor or whether
it is our turn to initiate that phone call. And, if someone gets way overdue
in his/her balance, others may strike them off of their list of receivers.
If you never give a party, you will soon find yourself not being invited
to any. And if you stop sending Christmas cards, your intake of them will
soon suffer. All of this is familiar to most of us, but this is not the
only level on which the balance or lack of it operates.

In the spiritual domain, the same law holds true. It is as if energy
moves in a circle - what goes around comes around, so to speak. If I take
and take and take spiritual gifts and never express my gratitude by giving
something back, eventually the channel becomes clogged and I may find myself
feeling alone in the universe.

The usual form of giving back spiritually is giving selfless service
to others. However, it also includes expressing our gratitude in worship
and in giving love either to the Divine One or to others. For, in the spiritual
domain, what we give to others is also a gift to the Divine. Jesus said
that whatever we do for others, we do for Him. Since we are all One, it
can be no other way. That goes for inflicting pain as well, incidently.

Since giving back involves an extension out from ourselves, it is a
great antidote for self-centeredness and suffering. It is also a means
to transmute negative emotions since it is, by its nature, loving and caring
rather than hurtful. May I remind you that we have a certain amount of
life energy available to us for daily living. It is our choice whether
we cast it into a loving or aggressive form as it leaves us for a journey
in the outside world. So what this says is that the perfect antidote to
suffering is to do something for someone else. And if that person is disadvantaged
in some way or suffering themselves, the value of your gift increases.
However this does not mean in terms of a return directly to you. Gratitude,
in the spiritual sense, is not a 1:1 ratio. It may flow from 1 to 1 to
1. . . in a very large circle before it returns to you and then
be unrecognizable as a return. This is part of what makes it selfless:
the ego does not recognize it as an outcome.

The adjective "selfless" is the key. If we offer something of ourselves
without thought of return, it becomes a spiritual gift and a spiritual
practice. Contributions to tax-exempt funds and organization do not count
because you get a return on your investment at tax time. Even being thanked
for your help is a return because it makes you feel good. Selfless service
is doing what is in front of you because the opportunity is there and you
can do it. That is all. Period. Mother Teresa is a good model.

Exercise: Gratitude

Make a list of the things you have to be thankful for. These can be
actual objects, people in your life, good things that have happened to
you, good feelings, etc. What ever you are grateful to have in your life.
You can add to your list as you go along. Then find a way to express your
gratitude every day. This does not have to be a big deal. The value is
in remembering to be grateful on a regular basis. Try to carry out your
ideas secretly so as not to get rewarding feedback from anyone. As an example,
your mailperson says something nice to you and makes you feel good. You
might express your gratitude by giving a dog bone to your neighbor's dog.
Or you might sit down and write a letter to your mother. Carry out this
exercise until it becomes a habit.

Forgiveness

One of the great examples of channeled scripture is A Course in Miracles.
And one of its central tenets is forgiveness. When someone does you a wrong,
it can be extremely difficult to forgive them especially if they are not
penitent. And the deeper the pain, the more difficult the forgiveness.
We can even say, "I forgive you," and still not mean it if we are pressed
to do so. But to really be redemptive, it must be heartfelt. How, for instance,
do we forgive Hitler? How do we forgive our ancestors who massacred 12
million Native Americans? How does a woman forgive her father for incest?
Another woman for rape by a stranger? When your soul is damaged, how can
you forgive? And, make no mistake, you must come to forgiveness or be prepared
to repeat the karmic exercise. Negative energy also comes around again
if the circuit is not broken. Forgiveness breaks the circle.

There are some things you can do to assist the forgiveness process.
You can do tong len. You can transmute the anger and grief into
love and compassion. Or you can study your aggressor to try to understand
his/her motivation which may then engender some compassion.

When people undergo psychoanalytic psychotherapy or other forms of therapy
that allow them to access repressed trauma, they may find themselves faced
with the dilemma of how to process the old memories so that forgiveness
becomes possible. One thing that helps, in my experience, is to try to
understand why the person had to abuse you. This may require some research
expecially if you were young at the time or if the person is now dead.
Nevertheless, if you study their personality and family history and talk
to people who knew them when they were younger, you may well come up with
some understanding of their life tensions, stress and frustrations at the
time. It goes without saying that you will find this especially difficult
if you are in the throes of rage yourself. You may need to calm your own
emotions first or pause to settle them as you progress if they resurface.
Often people who abuse others were, themselves, abused as children. So
you may find yourself able to empathize with them in the knowledge of their
suffering, and so become able to forgive.

What if the abuse is current? First you must get it stopped even if
that means leaving the relationship. There is always help to do that if
you really want it. Then you must recover physically and psychologically.
Then you do the research. Do not allow yourself to forget before you have
forgiven because the suffering will intensify in the unconscious. Get help
if you can. If you cannot, you might consider forming your own support
group to help you through it. You can even do this online.

Another way to deal with forgiveness is to approach the other person
directly and try to talk it out expressing your own feelings, but, instead
of blaming, ask for clarification of the other person's motives. You may
not have all the facts. When you get them all, you may feel differently.
Study some books on conflict resolution and learn how to listen for the
objective truth. Ask for a mediator if you cannot stand up for yourself.
Maybe therapy would help you sort things out. But do take action. Holding
grudges poisons the system.

Cultivate Empathy and Attunement

Most of our emotional stuff comes from injury we perceive is done to
our self-esteem or self-image. To the extent to which this is true, we
need to work with ego to change the perceptions. If that is not the case
and the damage was intentionally inflicted, there is a challenge to understand
the perpetrator. Ask yourself what role s/he is taking in the we-are-all-One
process. For all the evil in the world belongs to all of us, so there has
to be grounds for empathy. You may have been spared the trauma that evoked
the aggression in the one who hurt you. There is gratitude in that perception.
Probably enough to invoke a certain amount of compassion. Keep ego's voice
at bay while you are processing this sort of thing because it will take
a defensive stance that is inimicable to forgiveness. Incidently, forgiveness
does not mean you sanction the behavior or that it does not need to be
prevented. What we are talking about here is cleansing your soul.

The attunement part of this refers to self-protection. Before you engage
the process of empathizing with a perpetrator and their negative energy,
you protect yourself by attuning to Divine Energy. You can do this through
meditation, by doing The Divine Light Invocation (Radha, 1987), by surrounding
yourself in Light or some similar protective practice. And you hold on
to that Divine connection with one hand while you descend into the morass
of negativity that needs forgiveness.

Exercise: Empathy

Read chapter 7 in Emotional Intelligence. Think about how you
might have lost some of your earlier abilities to empathize. Do you find
it easier to empathize with anger or fear or grief? If you cannot empathize
with one or more of these, is it due to an inability to deal with these
emotions in yourself? If so, what might you do about it?

Lovemaking

"To reach God you have to be turned inside out, burned
with the fire of love until nothing remains but ashes" (Vaughn-Lee, 1999).

Lovemaking, whether it is done on a physical or spiritual level, crowds
out negativity. They are mutually exclusive. When you are in a state of
ecstasy or rapture, you cannot hate, and love overcomes fear because it
instills trust. By lovemaking, I do not mean just sex though sex at its
finest is an expression of true intimacy. Lovemaking is any intimate contact
that brings you into union with the Divine One. Most often It is embodied
in another person, but It can be solitary, group-oriented or global as
well since we are all One. You know it by its blissfulness, the shimmering
scintillations of grace. You feel ecstatic in your oneness with all there
is and the mindlessness of true rapture. It brings you to a more or less
permanent state of enlightenment. Meditation is intended to bring you to
this state of Grace. So is worship.

Read verse 55 in the Tao Te Ching.

Longing to Go Home

"It's fire. Give up if you don't understand by this time
that your living is firewood." - Rumi

You are minding your own business going about the daily chores or perhaps
sitting at your desk at the office. Maybe you are jackhammering a hole
in the pavement or delivering papers. Without warning, in a quiet moment,
you are assaulted by an intense feeling of longing that opens a bottomless
pit in the middle of your abdomen. It is a sense of solitary loneliness
that almost makes you sick. If you are very busy, it may pass and be forgotten.
But it may return at the end of the day when your work is finished and
you are tired with your defenses down. You may take a drink, smoke another
cigarette, have a chocolate sundae with whipped cream or a piece of cheesecake.
Or you may try to instigate a sexual encounter. You may go to the refrigerator
and gorge yourself on whatever is in there and then throw up. You may turn
on the television and watch it mindlessly until bedtime or just go to bed
and lose it in sleep.

But it always comes back. It is the need for union, to become whole,
in identity with the One. Nothing short of that reunion will satisfy this
longing because it is designed to lead us back home. That is what this
work is all about.

Exercise: Longing

Read pages 71-81 in Planetary Brother and do the exercises Bartholomew
suggests.

In Unit VI. Emotional Upheaval we have seen what extensive damage
uncontrolled emotions can do and have learned some ways to work with them
to reduce their chaotic impact on our lives. Unit VII.
Male Sexuality includes the physiology of male sexuality, aggression,
warriorship, transmutation of sexuality into compassion and male menopause.